Those look like pretty large lavs for hosts or presenters ... most of our national TV presenters here have really tiny lavs the size of a matchstick .... maybe similar to the Countryman mics?? Never seen anything with a big cage on it like that on a TV presenter. I would have thought that broadcast people would go for something really tiny so it hardly catches the eye and probably out of us mere mortal's price bracket anyway!!

You're right, the best shot is for a very few seconds, around 09:20 into the video.

It looks a bit like a Sennheiser MKE40, with the factory wind shield, but I can't say for certain. The MKE 40 is cardioid, so it may be some other variation with a different pattern, hiding inside the foam shield. I'd bet a cup of espresso that it's something in that family.

It is funny that a lot of equipment choices in TV are now being made by non audio operators and most of them due to cost restrictions but mostly at the detriment of the visual and audio aspect.

Headset mic's seem to be the flavour of the month here in the Uk but they look and sound dreadful and every ENG crew now seems to have a shotgun with grip, softie and plug in transmitter for in vision work where an RE50 would be more appropriate.

You also find that a lot of TV studios are now owned independently and hire kit more suitable for PA use sometimes gets its way onto the kit list and it may be that the TV crew were having to follow what the PA company that were doing the audience rig for the show were providing.

We just had a general election here and most of the party political husting feeds were provided by the PA companies so most of the audio was coming from cardioid mic's at very low levels as they tend to keep the gain well down to suit the KW of speakers feeding the audience.

my main doubt is since I am going to go 6 days with a audio video service for a weekly episode of investigative reports tv show, (with my equipment) does really make sense to bring some sanken cos 11 when the only lavalier in the services arsenal is the low budget sennheiser me2?

this is the standard, in tv studios RAI or MEDIASET lavaliers are the one of the pic but all audio pa companies and services go with sennhieser evolution and me2.

I personally have the ME2 and would be quite happy to use it on mainstream broadcast rather than those ugly ME40 ones, just because a mainstream broadcaster uses a particular product it does not mean they have made that choice for technical reasons as I stated above. Indeed I have used my panasonic HPX371 1/3" chip camera with my G2 radio mic's with ME2 on numerous Mediaset jobs in the past and they have not questioned it at any time.

I have never seen those ME40 mic's before and if I turned up on location and clipped one of them on a reporter I would guess that questions would be asked.

i have had just a confirm from a gui working in Rai, he says that the 90% of productions have sound reinforcement in studio since the have audience, therefore this is there reason why the me40 became the standard.

Well the same goes for the UK and since the early 80's we have had sound re-inforcement as part of the TV audience with lav mic's.

I have never ever used a cardioid mic just to suit a 100-300 audience when there are millions watching the TV transmission, besides the PA is there to just allow the audience to hear what is going on and not as part of the show you see on screen.

There are other smaller cardioid mic's available such as the ME4 from sennheiser so I suspect a poor choice as it looks dreadful on screen and would not be acceptable if the audio dept were to choose it here.

As for audience PA systems here we tend to favour small speakers such as the JBL control on or HK systems that are focussed and zoned to suit the audience reaction mic's.

I'm surprised they chose them because normally, visuals have so much importance - and they look, frankly, stupid! even if they sounded really good, TV people usually spend quite a lot of energy making their components invisible!